


To blink

by AnoushkaGreen



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Guilt, Hurt/Comfort, No Incest, Number Five | The Boy Has Issues, Number Five | The Boy Whump, Number Five | The Boy has PTSD, Number Five | The Boy-centric, POV Vanya Hargreeves, Panic Attacks, Platonic Relationships, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Protective Vanya Hargreeves, Recovery, Sibling Bonding, Tired Number Five | The Boy, Underage Drinking, Vanya Hargreeves-centric, no beta we die like ben, well sortof
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-09
Updated: 2020-11-09
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:20:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27471874
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnoushkaGreen/pseuds/AnoushkaGreen
Summary: After the apocalypse is prevented, Vanya must come to terms with her feelings while readapting to life in the old timeline. When Five starts visiting her flat, she finds comfort in the changes and familiarities of his presence, feeling hope increase as they regrow into their old closeness.One day, she realizes he is not coping as well as she had thought.
Relationships: Number Five | The Boy & Vanya Hargreeves
Comments: 15
Kudos: 177





	To blink

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! Since quarantine started, I decided my official coping mechanism™ would be writing, so here it goes. This is my first fic in almost 8 years so I hope you like it!
> 
> I must say that English is not my first language so if you see any mistakes please don't hesitate to leave a comment correcting me.
> 
> Enjoy!

As much as things had changed since the prevention of the apocalypse, a lot had also stayed the same. 

When the Hargreeves came back to their original timeline, Vanya took the bus home to find her apartment intact and her job as a first chair waiting for her in the morning. She wasn’t sure what she thought about the latter— knowing what it had cost her former colleague — but, at least at first, she had been grateful for the warmth of her bed and the privacy her flat offered her. Vanya was _tired_. Between the memory of Sissy still fresh on her mind and the newfound guilt that came with understanding what her actions had caused, she had preferred to be alone.

She hadn’t been the only one who seemed to need a little time, either. Vanya had recognized the disoriented loss in her siblings' faces whenever they gathered in a meeting, which had become now a far more frequent event. Unlike the world around them, the changes they bore had been far more evident. A tad more mature and, perhaps, a tiny bit less broken, their family had managed to reattach itself, even if ever so slightly. 

They had all been a little more scared to live, having lost time and time again whatever it was that they had built in the previous timelines. This time, however, the days had gone by exactly as they were meant to, and those days had turned to weeks and then to months. The Hargreeves quickly busied themselves, burying their memories as they fixed the split ends they had left behind in this life, before the world had burnt to the ground. Things were getting better, bit by bit, and Vanya couldn’t help but feel proud of them. The world was saved and they were coping. So was she.

About a month after their return, Five started visiting her flat. Well, he had dropped by before that, if she was to be fair, but as the weeks went by, the frequency of his appearances gradually increased, until he became less of a visitor and more of an unsolicited roommate. Not that it was an issue, really. Vanya and Five were close — or, at least, had been, as children. But a long time has passed since that. Now it seemed strange to her that he would seek her out that often, if at all. Out of everyone, Vanya couldn’t understand how he didn’t hate her. 

Five blinked by whenever he liked, never sparing her a warning. Sometimes, she would come home to find him sitting in her armchair, either reading or scribbling in a notebook as he was prone to do. On other occasions, she would wake to the smell of coffee being made in the kitchen, and he would always apologize for the early hour, placing two mugs of the best blend he could find on the table. 

Their encounters weren’t always that peaceful, however. Some nights, the ones she dreaded the most, she would find him sitting on the couch, staring silently at one of the walls. She would sit next to him then, calling his name in hopes of starting a conversation, as she had done the day after his return. But after that one fiasco, he had never really opened up to her and, on nights such as these, he barely showed a sign of recognition, distant eyes shifting from one side of the room to the other in calculated contemplation. 

On such occasions, Vanya felt her heart drop in her stomach with worry. She had tried many times to snap him out of it, to shake his arms and touch his hair, to somehow reassure him. Her attempts had always been fruitless and, sometimes, she had even managed to make it all worse, causing Five to bury himself so deep in this stupor that his stillness would stretch out for hours. 

Talking to Five about such matters had been no good and, as he was still strongly refusing any professional help she suggested, she hadn’t known what else she could do to ease him when he had a fit. With time, she had learned to just stay beside him, hoping her presence, at least, could be of slight comfort. 

Despite this, Vanya still loved his company. She enjoyed the evenings when she got to play her violin by his side and the mornings when she woke to discover a new stack of books piled on the table, methodically selected to fit her favorite genres. She could see he was trying to get better, to snap a little less at her, and smile a little more. As arrogant and pretentious as he could be, he had always been more gentle towards her, and it was easy to forget his age, then, when his tone filled her with memory. They still didn’t talk as much as they did in their youth, but she saw progress when they were together, as the nights sitting on the couch dwindled and the silent morning coffees lasted longer. Five appeared to appreciate their moments as well as she did. She hoped he was happy. 

Such were her musings as she walked her way back from work, feeling like a ghost among the people surrounding her, ignorant of the disaster that had almost taken their lives. Before it had all happened, Vanya didn’t think she would ever be so grateful to bid the baker a good morning, to see the buildings lighting up at night. She always went to work on foot now, grasping onto such mundanities in hopes that, perhaps, remembering them would stop her from incidentally blowing it all up next time. She kept holding on to this thought.

While her mind wandered, Vanya reached for the door, fingering the keys in her pocket. With only a soft brush of her hand, however, it slid open, clicking softly. She stared at its handle, a mix of fear and surprise working its way up her neck. Had she forgotten to lock it? She was sure she hadn’t. Ever since the whole Harold Jenkins incident, she had always made sure to keep her flat thoroughly sealed, a habit all of her siblings equally supported, and that she was only eager to comply. Her suspicions were confirmed as she approached to take a closer look.

The lock looked _busted_ , its golden metal encrusted with multiple scratches. The doors' situation was just as dire, wood splintered rather ungracefully as if someone had banged on it. _Had the Commission broken into her house?_ It made sense, considering Five’s constant presence there, never to mention her own agency when it came to the apocalypse. But with Herb as a director, their parole had never been threatened and she would hope that trained assassins had a more gentle hand in forcing their entry. _Burglars then?_ Vanya thought It seemed more likely, gripping the keys strongly as she silently prepared to summon her powers. She could only hope the house remained whole if it ever came to that. She had just changed her floorboards after all, and the wood had been remarkably expensive.

Vanya walked in slowly, softening her steps with caution. Her eyes searched the living room for any signs of intervention but found the house quiet and untouched. The music sheets she had left on the table that morning laid spread up in the exact same way, and a plate was still resting in the kitchen sink, waiting for someone to wash it clean. The door to her room was wide open, and even from her standpoint, she could see it was empty, bed unmade. She advanced further into the house, slowly unraveling the rest of the living room to her sight. As she drew near, she saw something sprawled on the couch, a person. A _known_ person, she realized, taking in the brown hair and skinny limbs in her presence. 

“Five?” - She called softly, breath hitching in recognition. 

When she got no answer, Vanya approached him quickly, dropping her bag in alarm. Had he been the one to bust the door? She had never given him the keys, but he had never even needed them, to begin with, having always preferred to pop around the house in a burst of blue. _Was he hurt?_ She dropped on her knees, inspecting his form. He was completely out, face hidden in a cushion. The clothes Allison had so kindly gifted him were distinctly dusty and the skin on his elbows had been scraped raw, but, otherwise, he was seemingly unscathed. Vanya allowed herself a breath of relief, eyes glancing downwards.

That’s when she saw the bottle. A rather fancy one, she dared say, with pretty swirls decorating the glass and a well-designed label printed out in sturdy paper. A half-empty, _stolen_ bottle of Scotch, right there, in the slack grip of her brother's fingers. _Shit._

Klaus had warned Vanya this could happen as soon as Five’s visits had become known. When he first came back to them, they hadn’t been alarmed by his drinking. Between the stressfulness that the end of times offered and his supposedly old age, no one could have blamed him for indulging in a glass or two. With the apocalypse gone, however, Klaus — being the only one left with him in the mansion and remarkably familiar with the symptoms of alcoholism — slowly became aware of just how _fond_ Five was of his whisky. Five had always been aloof, even as a kid, but in the peacefulness of a thriving timeline, their family found him balancing between solid periods of presence and distance, the latter marked by missing bottles in the cabinet and passed out boys in the foyer. They had all been worried, then, but Five had angrily dismissed their questions and, with time, stopped turning up drunk and started disappearing every couple of weeks instead.

She sighed, taking the bottle from his hands. In all six months since the apocalypse, Five had never shown up in her flat drunk before. As such, she had had a hard time believing her siblings' accounts of his state of mind, not when she saw him get better every day, making himself vulnerable in ways she could never have expected. She felt a pang of sadness wash over at this development, the silence of the room rhythmically cut by his breaths against the couch’s corduroy lining.

Vanya sat on the floor, her head resting beside him. She glanced at the bottle in her hands, then at his wild heap of hair. In his wakefulness, Five’s presence was so sharp and lively it was easy to forget how small he truly was in this mismatched body. _All this drinking cannot do him any good, looking like this_ , she thought as her eyes fell shut, slowly leading her into a light slumber.

—

Her sleep came to a halt when loud sounds began to cross the room. Vanya rose in alarm, her vision failing her when she moved her head a bit too quickly. Her eyes fell on her brother, his form uncharacteristically shrunken in itself, hands shakingly pulling at his hair. She stared in surprise at the sight of him so visibly distressed, as even in his lows Five tended to hold his façade quite well. It terrified her, seeing him like this. It reminded her of Harlan.

“Five?” She called, her voice almost a whisper. “Are you okay?” 

As she shook the rest of her sleepiness off, her attention quickly snatched to his breathing. Something was wrong. Five heaved with difficulty, air coming fast in and out of his mouth in quick and uncoordinated gasps. The room was disrupted by terrible wheezing sounds irradiating from his lungs, and Vanya recognized them as the ones that had woken her.

She snatched to action in a flash, intuitively gripping his arms as she called for him, desperately trying to calm him down. At her touch, Five’s gaze shot up, heartbeat spiking and eyes wide and glazed, darting frantically around the room. This was one of those nights, she realized, the ones when he came to sit on the couch. Something was different, however, as his usual apathy had been replaced by this strange desperation, in the likeness of which she has never seen in him before. His arms pulled wildly, trying to release themselves from her grip. A sudden wave of blue began forming around his fists. Vanya could have smacked herself for touching him in that state, knowing how badly that could trigger him. _How could she have been so god forsakenly_ -

“Vanya?” He suddenly called, voice hoarse. She looked up to meet his gaze and was startled to see that his eyes had stopped moving and were now fixed on her, gleaming with recognition. Relief washed over her.

“Hey there, It's me, I’m here for you, okay?” She said, trying to control the waver in her voice.

His fists unclenched, the blue waves vanishing with them. A moment passed. Five stared at her through his haze, his frantic movements slowing slightly at the sound of his sister's voice. When Vanya slowly released her grip on him, he lowered his head again, his newly freed hands diving into his arms to scratch at his skin. She wanted to hold him in place again but decided against it, a worried frown etched on her features as she reflected on the unlikeliness of his behavior.

“No no, Five, look at me, don’t hurt yourself, okay? Do you know where you are?” She tried. _His breath isn’t calming down_ , she thought anxiously, as her brother kept his gaze lowered.

Vanya was starting to think she somewhat recognized what this was. As a child, she had seen Ben have his fair share of panic attacks before, although, to be frank, they had never been quite like this. She wondered if the alcohol had somehow triggered this reaction and found herself almost certain it had. It would explain why she had never seen Five in such a state, at the very least. But then again, Klaus had never mentioned any outbursts either, and she had long suspected she was the only one in her family to even know about his bad days. _Has this happened before? Was he hiding this from them?_ Vanya couldn’t bear the thought of him going through this alone, even if she found herself completely helpless beside him. She couldn’t touch him. She couldn’t talk to him. She couldn’t-

“You're not real” His voice slurred, startling her. “You're dead. I'm making this up again”. His body shook heavily, hands coming up to rub at his face repeatedly, leaving a trail of soft welts on his skin. 

Vanya froze, finding herself unable to say anything. She could feel herself detaching from reality, the sight of her brother struggling to breathe before her looking suddenly unreal, frantic movements slowing down in the clock of her mind. A heavy feeling of guilt dripped down her throat.

In her new life in this timeline, she had spent long, sleepless nights thinking about it all. The apocalypse. Her siblings' deaths. The disappearance of Ben’s ghost. It had taken a long time for her to even begin letting go of her guilt but, even now, as their lives finally began to take shape again, she couldn’t completely forget it. She didn’t want to, either. As with the walks to work, the coffee shops and the baker’s good mornings, she had hoped her guilt would ground her, disciplining her to a halt if she ever lost control again. But she hadn’t thought about Five, then. 

With his visits, she got used to the equation-filled notebooks lying around the house and the food that was always left on his plate when they finished dinner, seeing them as products of his typical alertness, nothing more than a trace of personality, at most. Yet the nights on the couch had been different. It was then that she began to recognize the remnants of trauma within him, when Five’s invisible terrors crept up in the room, leaving them both silent for entirely different reasons. Taking in his miserable state before her, Vanya now realized she had never seen any of it for what it truly was. For the first time, she came to a full understanding of what _her_ apocalypse had done to him, and the guilt she had managed to forget resurfaced in a twinge, plunging her back into reality. 

Vanya looked back at Five, abruptly aware he was rambling, whispers emerging from his mouth in an act of self-assurance. She drew her hand to hover above him. 

“Hey, Five, listen to me. I’m sorry, okay? I’m so sorry you had to go through that. But it's over now, yeah?" She said, her voice breaking. “Can I touch you?” she asked quietly. 

Her brother tensed up, mouth snapping shut as he shot a quick look at her. A long moment passed, and Vanya thought he had missed her question entirely when his answer came with a slight, uncertain nod. Slowly, she wrapped her arms around him, giving him time to react if he needed to. Now they were that close, she could smell the whisky that came out with his breathing and the feverish feel of his skin, moist with sweat despite the evening chill that surrounded them. The absolute _wrongness_ of the situation hit her as she hugged him, young in body but not in mind, hopelessly drunk on a Tuesday in hopes of quenching some memory. She understood now that the fires of that previous world had never ceased to haunt him, slipping in through the windows of routine. She vowed herself to help him escape it, even if it took her a hundred nights on the couch to lead him through it. 

“Five, listen to me" She started, softly tightening her hold on him. "Do you feel this? It means I'm not dead, okay? And I _promise_ you I'm just as real as you are. You did it, Five. We're safe.”

A deep silence followed. She didn’t know how long she had stayed like this, gentle hands drawing patterns on his back in what she hoped to be a reassuring gesture. It was their first hug in more than 20 years, and she thought she had better make it a good one, at least, soft like the ones they gave each other as small children, when her sleep had been riddled with horrors and she had sought him to scare her troubles away. Vanya smiled at that thought, admiring the familiarity that seemed to be ever-present in change. 

After what had felt like hours, Five’s breathing finally calmed and his movements quietened, restlessness melting before her. Slowly, she felt his arms encircle her frame, ultimately reciprocating her gesture. A wave of warmth plummeted in her chest at this progress, not having expected him to make this kind of move tonight, if ever. Time stretched. Outside, her windows had darkened completely and she suspected it was very late. A breeze flew inside through the door, making Five’s ever-present shudders deepen with the chill.

She parted the hug softly and walked to the armchair, reaching for the blanket he had left there two nights prior. When she turned back to the couch, she was relieved to see his eyes had become much clearer, as it appeared the burst of adrenaline had diminished most effects of the alcohol. Vanya placed the blanket on his back, sitting by his side once more. As she took his hands between her palms, he kept his glance down, ostensibly ashamed. A moment passed, and then two. Five bore a concentrated gaze, seeming to collect his thoughts. Before the third moment was gone, he stiffly straightened his posture, removing his hands from her grip.

“I’m sorry you had to see that,” He said faintly. 

She gave him an encouraging smile. “It’s fine.” She said, letting the distance between them grow now that he looked a little better. Their silence became slightly uncomfortable.

“Has this happened before?” She asked, clearing her throat awkwardly. “The panic attack, I mean.” 

Beside her, Five let out a loud sigh, slouching again to bring his hands to rub tiredly at his eyes. _Well, that was a crossed line_ , she thought. _Should have imagined the hug had been the limit._ He hesitated as he looked up again, though, eyes catching her discomposure. He shrugged in defeat.

“Yeah” He answered, coughing lightly “It does sometimes. I can manage, don't worry about it.”

Vanya scoffed, feeling a rush of newfound helplessness and a sudden urge to punch him in the face. 

“Is this what you call _manag-_ Come on, Five, you can't be serious. Five, we are _worried_ about-” She said, stuttering bitterly through her words as her brother averted his gaze, impatiently bidding her to stop. She stared at him in lingering exasperation before forcing herself into a more gentle expression. 

“Okay, I'm sorry. I-I didn’t mean to push you” She offered. Five shook his head, relaxing the muscles on his back.

“No- You know what? You’re right, I’m not-” He interrupted himself with a sigh, pursing his lips in an effort to complete the sentence. But Vanya had understood it well enough. She smiled at him, clasping a supportive hand in his arm before getting up, deciding to call it a day. 

“Come on, you look exhausted. I’ll grab a pillow and some pajamas, and maybe you can try to sleep a little, alright? For real this time”. She offered, turning to walk to her room. 

“Vanya?” he called. She turned back to her brother: a small, _familiar_ body sitting on the couch. It was like one of those nights, she thought, though for once his eyes didn't wander, staring right back at her with a glow of surprising mischief. 

“I'm sorry about your door.” He said, a known smirk forming on his lips. Vanya laughed lightly before entering her room. 

When she woke again, the morning greeted her with neatly folded blankets on an empty couch. A plate of waffles and honey rested on the table and, alongside it, a mug of coffee, surface sprinkled with cream just the way she liked it. She sipped at it slowly, watching through the window as people started a new day outside. The coffee was still warm. 

_Maybe I should find a bigger apartment._

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!
> 
> If you liked this fic, please leave a comment telling me your thoughts <3 Any suggestions on improvements are also very appreciated


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